The artist suddenly took a step forward and faced the ladies fairly. The color had returned to his face, and his eyes sparkled in defiant scorn at his small tormentors. His voice was raised to a clear pitch:—
“You make mistake, most noble ladies. You do injustice to the humble artist, to his work, and to her most exalted Highness.” Here he bowed deeply and with reverence. “It is very true you do not now behold on this blank canvas the work of the many days of the artist. Yet that is not an unsolvable mystery. Shall the humble but honorable artist allow his work upon the portrait of her Serene Highness, the daughter of the sun-god, to remain in his most public salon for the chance and vulgar observation of the spiteful curious? Permit me to observe with proper respect and humility that no explanation of the substitution of the blank canvas is due. Further, ladies, you make a treasonable mistake when you declare the august sittings were unattended. Her Highness, upon all occasions when she deigned to permit me to paint her august picture, was both chaperoned and attended by the honorable maid, Onatsu-no.”
A sudden little shriek broke from one of the ladies, at which all turned toward her and then followed the direction of her startled eyes. The next instant all this company of clattering-tongued ladies, whether in European dress or kimono, had fallen to their knees, and were touching the mats with their heads.
The Princess Sado-ko, attended by her maiden, Natsu-no, stepped slowly down from the slight eminence of the adjoining room, the shojis of which the pages drew behind her. There was no expression in the face of Sado-ko as she crossed the room, bowing her head with grace in response to the servile courtesies of her maids of honor. She made a slight motion with her hands, and there was a quick movement and rustling of the obedient ladies, moving toward the shoji that led without. One of them, more daring than the others, the Lady Fuji-no, paused by the veranda doors, and spoke with affected timidity:—
“May it please your Highness that we be permitted to remain to-day for this sitting?”
Sado-ko’s eyes were above the head of her father’s new favorite and her own maid of honor.
“Lady Fuji-no,” she said, “I have spoken.”
Fuji bowed herself down to the mats, then quietly joined those without.
CHAPTER VIII